Softball2009 NCAA Women's College World Series

POSTGAME NOTES

Championship
Series Game 2: Washington 3, Florida 2

·Washington beat Florida 3-2 to earn its first softball national
title. It was UW’s first appearance in the best-of-three championship series,
which started in 2005 (the Huskies advanced to the championship game in 1996
vs. Arizona and in 1999 vs. UCLA).

·Washington finished the year with a 51-12 record and became the
22nd Pac-10 team in 28 years to win the WCWS. A Pac-10 team has advanced to
the championship finals in 23 straight seasons.

·After being shut out in Game 1 of
the championship series, Florida (63-5) scored two runs (one earned) in the top
of the first inning tonight. Aja Paculba led off the game with a triple and
crossed home plate on a passed ball before a Megan Bush sacrifice fly knocked
in Kristina Hilberth. Hilberth reached on an error.

·Washington countered with two runs in the bottom of the first on
three singles and a wild pitch.

·The Huskies took a 3-2 lead in the
bottom of the third frame when a fielding error by Florida pitcher Stacey
Nelson allowed Kimi Pohlman to score her second run of the game. Pohlman
reached base that inning on an error by center fielder Michelle Moultrie.

·Washington junior pitcher Danielle Lawrie (42-8) went
coast-to-coast for the Huskies this week, throwing all 44.2 innings of the
team’s six games. Tonight, the Langley, B.C., product allowed two runs (one
earned) on seven hits while fanning eight.

·Lawrie moved into sole possession
of second place on the UW all-time wins list with 96. Jennifer Spediacci
(1997-00) holds the record with 100 wins. Lawrie’s eight strikeouts tonight
gave her 521 on the season, one shy of the Pac-10 single-season record (Arizona’s Taryne Mowatt struck out 522 in 2007).

·An 8-0 loser last night, Florida dropped back-to-back games for the first time since March 31, 2007, when Mississippi beat it in both games of a doubleheader.

·Tonight’s defeat was just Florida’s second in 54 games this year when scoring first.

·Washington led the WCWS in team batting average
(.304) and team earned run average (1.88). UW pitcher and tournament most
outstanding player Danielle Lawrie led all hurlers with 49 strikeouts.

·A Women's College World Series
record 120 runs were scored this year for a record average of 8.0 per contest
(15 games). The previous record for runs in a WCWS was 95 (16 games) in
1997. The previous record for runs per game was 6.8 in 1996 (89 in 13
games).

·Tonight’s attendance was 5,807.
This year's WCWS total attendance was 60,512, second most in the 28-year
history of the event (62,463 in 2007). The 6,724 fans per session this
year set a WCWS record (previous mark was 6,648 per session last year).

·Since the start of the
best-of-three championship series in 2005, this week marked the third time the
national champion won the first two contests. Arizona defeated Northwestern in
two games in 2006 and Arizona State swept Texas A&M in 2008.

POSTGAME QUOTES

FLORIDA HEAD COACH TIM WALTON

Opening comment:

“First of
all I want to congratulate Washington on winning their first national
championship. They were outstanding and had a great team, great coaches and
were well prepared. They did an outstanding job. I also want to congratulate
the other six teams that got here. They all had great seasons and only one
champion can be crowned. I am very proud to represent the University of Florida. I thank the University of Oklahoma and the (Oklahoma City) All Sports Association for
the job they did in making this event fun for all the student-athletes and for
the fans. I also just want to say what a great team that I have. This will go
down as one of the best teams in the sport of softball, without winning the
championship of course. But this is a great team and to win 132 games (with
only) 10 defeats in two seasons, it’s tremendous. One of the best two-year
spans you will ever see.”

On Florida senior pitcher Stacey Nelson:

“Obviously,
number 42 won’t be back for us next year. We will feel that because not only is
she a great pitcher but she is also one of the most outstanding people you will
ever meet. I already told her this but there will not be the number 42 worn in
the sport of softball as long as I’m the coach there. She just meant that much
to our program and we would have not been here in the last two years without
this young lady.”

On the
change of attitude from Championship Game 1:

“Yeah, we
had a sit-down meeting and I will take responsibility for the attitude today
and will take responsibility for the one yesterday. Whether it be a lackadaisical
attitude, or if it was the fact that we were overconfident from the night
before or still on an emotional high, because it is hard to come down from
those heroics. I am very proud of them and I can go home tonight and feel very
good about the way that we played softball today. We gave it everything that we
had and nobody gave up until the very last out and I am very proud of that.”

FLORIDA SENIOR PITCHER STACEY NELSON

On the
final loss of her career:“Losing sucks,
especially on this stage. It’s the things that you have learned playing the
game that you really take into the rest of your life. And I am not going to
remember – well I will remember that we came in second – but what I am going to
remember are the 20 great girls that I had on my team, playing with them for
four years, building the best relationships I’ve ever had, playing for a coach
like Tim Walton. There is a lot of pain that comes with this loss, but I’m
always going to remember my time at Florida as the best time of my life.”

FLORIDA SOPHOMORE SECOND BASEMAN AJA PACULBA

On her
offense on the night:

“The ball up the middle, I kind of got
jammed on it but I thought I got enough on it to make it go through. But the
shortstop came in and made a good play. On the triple, I was just trying to
start the game off right and get the momentum early. And I have been struggling
so I just wanted to do it for myself and for the team. To grab the momentum
early was the goal.”

WASHINGTON HEAD COACH HEATHER TARR

Opening comment:

“I am so proud to be a part
of what this program is about and has been about for as long as it has been in
existence since 1993. When I started playing in 1994 it was our dream to win a
national championship. It was my junior year we lost it and we lost in the
championship and I know exactly how that feels. The people who have played in
this program, who have played for national championships, we all understand
what this feeling is like. We knocked on the door. I knew when we recruited
Danielle’s (Lawrie) class that we going to have the potential to do this, and
for that to become a reality and to do it the right way, I can’t even put it
into words. We have an amazing group of young women who went through the
toughest road anyone had to hoe to get here and ultimately I think that’s what
caused this to happen. We don’t really want to have to go that road again but
the last inning of the UMass game (in regional play) was what got us through
this. I can’t say enough about Danielle and her ability to carry a team on her
back, literally, from September until now. Ashley Charters and the whole senior
class is just phenomenal.”

On
approaching Florida pitcher Stacey Nelson:

“I think we
just kept getting better and better throughout the postseason and by the time
this came we were peaking. You can go back to our batting averages, and
comparing them to Arizona or a Florida, our batting averages might not be the
best but we train all year for this. We train all year to be where we need to
be when we need to be there and it is awesome to be able to see it come
together.”

On the
toughness of the Pac-10 in softball:

“We are so
proud to be representatives of the Pac-10 Conference because one through eight
of us is a battle every weekend and everyone makes everyone else better. We had
some challenges with Stanford earlier and we came back and beat them when we
needed to beat them. We had tough challenges with UCLA. They no-hit us and we
came back and found a way to beat them. Those challenges help you for this type
of play and thank goodness we play in the Pac-10.”

WASHINGTON JUNIOR PITCHER DANIELLE LAWRIE

On the seventh inning:

“At the end I faced one of
their toughest hitters (Francesca Enea) and she hit a good pitch. It wasn’t one
that was left over the plate. I think she was scraping to do whatever she
needed to do to get her team back on the board. She hit a good pitch and I
thought for a second it might have been out, but once it hit the fence and they
had the runner on second I was just thinking no, no, no. We have worked too
hard for this to happen right now. I like to keep it interesting, but no it
wasn’t going to happen.”

WASHINGTON SENIOR SECOND BASEMAN ASHLEY
CHARTERS

On going
out on top her senior year:

“This is definitely the best senior
gift I could get. This is what I have worked for ever since I started playing
softball. We had a very tough road to get here like Coach Tarr said, but we
wouldn’t have been here if it was easy and it is not meant to be easy.”

WASHINGTON FRESHMAN OUTFIELDER KIMI POHLMAN

On the long road to
becoming national champions:

“The road to get here
definitely hasn’t been easy. For me as a freshman, it really took a lot to
adjust to everything and I think we had people here who believed in the team
and believed in me as a player. We faced really hard competition and we
traveled a long ways. We went to Alabama and California back to back but we had
a really tough season and we found a way to win.”